Read
the captions by hovering over the images, and click on them to
see them enlarged.

St Mary,
Holme-next-the-Sea

Holme-next-the-Sea is a pretty
village between the Sunny Hunny holiday coast of the Wash
and the rather more select Islington-sur-mer of the
Burnham Market area. It has one of the most extraordinary
medieval churches in Norfolk; St Mary looks as if it has
been cobbled together from off-cuts brought from
elsewhere. I like it a lot for this.

The tower
is magnificent, a late 15th century Perpendicular affair
of the finest order, but it has nothing to do with the
rest of the building whatsoever. A walkway of the 1930s
joins it to the body of the church. This is because the
original aisled medieval church was rescued from
dereliction by being almost entirely demolished and
rebuilt in the second half of the 18th century. The tower
had been one of those south porch ones which are so
popular in north-west Norfolk, but the aisles were
demolished and the church rebuilt with a new west wall to
the east of the tower. The south wall of the church is
exceedingly odd, a stone built infilling of the former
arcade with all manner of windows either invented or
rescued from elsewhere. The north wall is equally odd,
because it does not retain a single window whatsover.

The
interior has a crispness which must have come from a
thorough-going mid-20th century refurbishment, and indeed
it is happily reminiscent of the gorgeous post-war church
at Bawdeswell across the county.
There are two sets Hanoverian royal arms, one carved and
the other a painted set dated 1779, bearing the name John
Holley, churchwarden. This probably indicates the
date at which the rebuilt church was complete.

There is a
quite superb west window depicting Faith, Charity and
Hope, and the east end is all of a Georgian piece. The
font is a gorgeously pretty 19th century marbled affair,
and there is one major medieval survival, the 1413 brass
to Henry Nottingham and his wife which is rather
eccentrically mounted on the nave wall. More spectacular
is the memorial to Richard Stone and his wife, which
records that he died at the age of 87 in 1607, having had
the fortune to behoulde no less than 72
grandchildren.

It is a
delightful interior, but it was while we were checking
over the outside that we had the fortune to meet one of
those great characters who make visiting Norfolk churches
such an adventure. He'd been awaiting bell ringers for
practice, and he'd heard me say to Peter that I thought
the church was 'very curious'. Rather than come over and
punch me on the nose, as I am sure he would have had
every right to do, he instead offered us both the chance
to go up to the top of the tower. I have a terrible fear
of heights, but working on the aversion therapy theory, I
try to combat it by exposing myself to as many heights as
possible. It hasn't worked yet, but I keep trying, and
this was my third Norfolk church tower of the year so
far. We climbed up the narrowing stairway, getting fairly
filthy in the process, and stepped out to glorious views
across the woods, and the marshes, and the grey North
Sea. A busy smudge off to the north-west turned out to be
Skegness; on a clear day, apparently, you can see the
cars swooping up and down on the roller coaster.
Holme-next-to-the-Sea is as far as it is possible to get
from my house in Ipswich and still be in East Anglia, and
so this peep into the north of England seemed entirely
appropriate. Directly west, the tower of Hunstanton St
Mary shimmered in the trees.

Home-next-the-Sea
has the only coastal ring of five bells still rung
between Kings Lynn and Holkham, including a bell of 1677
which has been in constant use for nearly 350 years. I
complimented the man on his delightfully ramshackle and,
well, curious church. "Yes", he
replied, "it is curious, but it's the only
one we've got, so we make the best of it that we
can."